


everyday deeds of ordinary folk

by darcylindbergh



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Many and Varied POVs, Missing Scenes, Quest of Erebor, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-12-26 23:25:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18292313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: In which the majority of the Quest happens by simply placing one foot in front of the other, and even the most ordinary of moments can grow into something remarkable.Something quite, quite remarkable.





	1. Being the Introduction

It is occasionally difficult, in the telling of a story, to know where to begin.

“Start at the beginning!” some folk say, and this is perhaps reasonable. The more foolish may say to start at the end, so that the time is not wasted in anticipation of an ending one may find they don’t want to hear. The wise, however, advise to start just  _before_  the beginning, if at all possible, so that the reader may better understand why they should care about the end, why they should care about what it might mean.

 _This_  story, being one of the most important stories ever to be told by the time the ending comes around, is therefore difficult to begin at all, because the end of the story is so much bigger and so much greater than its humble beginnings that it is hard to know how much further before the beginning one ought to go in order to catch sight of that faraway end—not unlike taking a step back in order to see the entirety of a thing, and finding that yet another step is necessary, and yet another.

The further back one steps, however, the more one realises it is not simply a matter of seeing  _a_ thing: it is a matter of seeing  _all_ things.

*

Do we begin, then, with the hobbit?

Yet if we were to begin with Bilbo Baggins, we would find that he was, at the start of this story, a perfectly respectable hobbit, and although respectability is all well and good, it is not particularly interesting, nor particularly inclined toward adventuring.

Thus we must begin a little before Bilbo Baggins became that respectable hobbit, and perhaps examine the faunt Bilbo had been. An imaginative, curious, half-wild little thing he'd been: his eyes had ever been on the Great East Road, imagining the Fields of Pelennor out of Farmer Maggot’s wheat and the Greenwood out of the copse of trees down by the Water; he had made trolls out of the scarecrows and orcs out of the Tuckborough dogs, conquering enemies with sticks and laughter and little portions of Belladonna’s best seed cakes.

But that was long ago, and to understand the juxtaposition between the faunt Bilbo had been and the hobbit he eventually became, perhaps we must understand how unlikely it is that Bilbo Baggins even  _exists._  

Perhaps we begin, then, at the midsummer’s evening, with the twilight settling over the Shire like sweet lavender and the candles in the lanterns beginning to gutter as they reach their ends, when Bungo Baggins had first looked up and noticed her, her cheeks pink with laughter and ribbons in her hair. “She’s not your sort,” Old Gerontius had warned him, when he’d caught Bungo looking. “My Belladonna, she’s not your sort. She’s a bird on the breeze. She needs to soar, and you Bagginses, well.” Old Gerontius had laughed. “You’re all sticks in the mud.”

Perhaps we must note the un-Baggins-like thing that had overcome Bungo in that moment, a fiery, hot thing, even though it had been kindly meant, and even though it had been true, and even though Belladonna had been a spectacle with mud in the hems of her skirts and wild daisies tangled in her hair besides. That wanting thing, that swelling thing, that riotous thing Bungo hadn’t been sure he’d ever felt before, swooping through his belly and coming to roost underneath his breastbone, made Bungo do the most un-Baggins-like thing he had ever done.

“Every bird has a nest,” he had told Old Gerontius, getting to his feet. “The swallows may fly free and far, but they always come home, and I’d rather be rejected by her hand than yours.”

And, in fact, Belladonna had not rejected Bungo Baggins, not for that dance nor for any dance after, and Bilbo had been raised by the swallow and the roost both, with curious fingers and calm feet, as odd a child as any hobbit had ever seen, his head in the clouds and his eyes on the stars even though his feet stayed firmly planted in the good, dark earth.

But then Bungo had died, and darkened clouds had blotted out the stars, and Belladonna had followed, and a chill had taken root in the earth, and Bilbo’s brittle respectability, a shell calcified by grief and mourning, had finally begun to harden.

This perhaps would be enough to interest anyone in Bilbo Baggins for his own sake, but in order for our story here to begin, we must go back a little further yet: to the _need_ for Bilbo Baggins.

*

Do we begin, then, with the dragon?

Fire-breathing and terrible, Smaug had come in a rush, an inferno and a hurricane, laying waste to the cities and the pines, to the soldiers and the civilians in equal measure, claiming Erebor, the beacon of the East, the last great Kingdom of the dwarrow, for his own. The desolation of Smaug had sent the Longbeards drifting into the world, where their hopes were whiled away, crushed by the starving years of Dunland and shattered on the slopes of Azanulbizar, where Thrór, the last true King Under the Mountain, long without his mind, had finally lost his head.

And so Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, called Oakenshield, the blacksmith prince of a wandering people, the melancholy figurehead of an exiled race, had taken up a throne darkened with the blood of his people, and turned his gaze toward the West.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and Thorin’s had been weighted with battle and grief, with madness and distrust. Heavy is the heart that does not laugh, and even once Thorin finally led his folk to peace, he had had little cause for hope.

“I would see you smile again, _nadad_ ,” his sister had said to him, long before our story was to start, watching as he rocked one of her sons to sleep. “I would see you happy again. They will look to you to learn how to lead our people, Thorin. I would have you teach them to lead with pride and with joy.”

“What pride can there be in the legacy of our people?” Thorin had asked, brushing the dark curls from Kíli’s forehead. “We scrape our living from the towns of men, barely more than beggars; we carve our halls from abandoned ruins. What joy can I teach him, when it was the hand of our king and grandfather that led more than half his family to their deaths?”

Dís had laid her hand on his arm. “Are you not proud of him? Of Fíli? Of their flailing fists, so strong, so eager to take up their father’s crafts? Is there not joy in their laughter, in the weight of him in your arms? Where there is life, there is hope, Thorin.”

“Our life is dying,” Thorin had returned, but he had allowed Dís to pull his forehead down to hers. “But perhaps you are right. I have had such little hope, _namad_. I would give them hope, if I can.”

Perhaps then, we should begin with hope.

Hope was a map, shared over a table at an inn at Bree, but before we can discuss the hope, perhaps we should first acknowledge where Thorin’s hope had been born: in a belly filled with another’s dread.

*

(Was it the dread of the advisor, watching his king drain himself in the name of duty, never taking, never filling, never lifting his gaze from his people for even a second of his own happiness? Was it the suspicion of a captain, devoted to a shield-brother and friend that has begun to grow reckless in his restlessness, who spoke of the future but never of his own?

Was it the guilt of a tinker who had, with tears in his eyes, told his own kin to stop coming home, to take his knives and his light fingers elsewhere before he brought danger and retribution back to their door? The apathy of the thief who had known it was coming, who had made his choice between supporting his family through whatever means and sitting around the hearth with them at night?

Was it the worry of a scribe finding packages of dried fruit and hard cheese left at his desk in the libraries, not for how they were attained but for who had not eaten in order to deliver them?

Was it the despair of a miner, tapping into rock and finding no ore, no iron, no metal at all and not even a chunk of quartz for the luck? Was it the agitation of a toymaker, bandaging of his cousin’s fingers, unable to speak the words that crowded so clearly into his mind? The panic of an architect with nothing to build, turning his skills instead to making the grain go farther and the cheese last longer, counting the mouths of dams and babes and counting them again and wondering, if he managed to feed them now, when he would manage it again?

Was it the terror of a soothsayer and healer, who saw the runes of success written only with the runes of death, who saw life in the future but not happiness? The alarm of a father and husband, who wanted more for his family than the silence of the last coin in a purse?

Was it the apprehension of an heir who saw the struggles of his people, who saw the struggles of his king, who could not see the strength to lead in himself? Was it the concern of a brother, who long doubted his own ability and his own place, too aware of his own naivety, too eager to prove himself worthy of the name of his kin?

Was it loyalty, that brought the dwarves to Thorin’s call? Was it honour? Was it a willing heart, a hopeful eye, a confident step?

Or was it the dread of a last chance?)

*

Yet we must go back a little further, to the dread that gave the voice to Thorin’s call, and do we then begin with Gandalf, called Mithrandir, called Tharkûn?

Do we begin with the creeping dread that spread like ice through Gandalf’s heart at every abandoned farm he passed, at every ravaged village he traveled through? Do we begin with the sorrow in his bones that grew with every rumour, every whisper, with the resignation in the voices of men and detachment in the eyes of elves?

Do we begin with the crawling thing taking over the ruined fortress of Dol Guldur, a shadow made of an evil that felt as sour and slick as black oil? With the tales of dark magic, with the rot and the decay spreading through the Greenwood, oozing into the Gladden fields, sickening the birds and the beasts and the men alike? With the tales of bandits on the road, equipped with orcish steel and with goblin-made armour? Do we discuss the darkness of it, the terrible  _familiarity_  of it, the way it made Gandalf feel to look into the eyes of frightened beings and see the horrors of the ages of Arda looking back?

Do we begin with terror?

The terror of an Istari is no small thing, and before he had been the Gandalf, he had been Olórin, a Maia of light and fire—should we then begin with the tears shed over Manwë’s hands, with fearful pleas for mercy?  _Don’t send me,_ Olórin had begged.  _Don’t send me, for I am afraid._

 _Yet that is why we must send you,_  Manwë had said, resting a hand over his head.  _You have learnt fear because you have learnt compassion, and pity, and patience. You have Nienna’s sadness in you, and you understand the great loss the Children of Ilúvatar will suffer if the lingering malice of Sauron’s rule cannot be snuffed out._

Gandalf did understand it, long after he was separated from the Valar, but he did not get used to it. He felt the fright and anguish in the world, the bleakness and the woe, and he felt it always, with every step, with every breath. Middle-Earth was thick with it, with the fading of the lands and the perpetual autumns of Rivendell and Lothlórien, with the scars of wolves and orcs clawed into the mountains, the forests, the plains.

And Gandalf had felt it when the dragon entered Erebor, and before, when the Arkenstone was shifted from the rock and into Thrór’s greedy hands; he had felt it stain the earth outside Moria and sink into the mines of Ered Luin; he had felt it at the door of the Prancing Pony in Bree, welling thick beneath the shield-bone of Thorin Oakenshield sitting just inside, breaking bread he could barely afford to stay the starvation of a lost father. He felt it twining around the future, twisting around the success of a quest that no one dared yet hope for, and one that he alone had the power to put into motion.

The terror of an Istari is no small thing.

But it is the small things that can soothe it.

It took Gandalf, heavy with grief and solemnity, perhaps too long to learn this secret, perhaps too long to understand it, but eventually he had: even the smallest candle is still a light in the dark.  

These things are the laughter around a crowded table, the sharing of food and drink with kith and kin, the quiet of a warm hearth, the security of a place called home. They are the well-earned pipe after hard, honest work and the comfort of bread that tastes sweeter for the hands that made it; they are the bounty of peace in greeting the sunrise and the satisfying exhaustion in dancing one more reel. These things are the music, swelling out over rolling hills and setting the fireflies to dancing; they are the flowers, blooming delicately into caring hands for no other reason than for the sheer joy of it.

These are the small, everyday acts of ordinary folk that keep the fear and the terror and the hate from gaining a foothold in the green places of the world. Small acts of happiness, and of kindness, and of faith in the goodness of others.

Acts of love.

Perhaps, then, we do begin with the hobbit after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nadad - brother  
> Namad - sister


	2. Being an Unexpected Party

“What do you think he’ll be like?”

“Who?”

“The hobbit, of course. Master What’s-His-Name. Biggins? Boggins?”

“Mm. Like a burglar, hopefully.”

It’s a cool night in the Shire, the chill of spring still underlying the suggestion of warmer days ahead, but the skies are clear and the grass is dry where Fíli and Kíli have settled themselves to wait for their few minutes. There’s something comforting about the roll of the hills here, about the open fields and the meandering brooks; Fíli lays back and closes his eyes, trying to memorise what it feels like.

It reminds him of being very little, somehow, of ‘ _amad_ coming home from the caravans, the salt-blown smell of her hair and the cold of the surface air trapped in her skirts, her hands gentle as they straightened his braids. She had done that same thing one last time before they’d left Ered Luin, pulling on the ends to hold them taut to match the lengths before plaiting the mother’s pattern he’d not worn since he came of age just behind his left ear.

 _Find us at the Lonely Mountain,_ he had soothed, taking her anxious hands in his. _I will have a new circlet made for you from the finest gold and the whitest gems by the time you reach us; I will have new rooms carved from the stone for you, with a fireplace big enough to roast a boar and ceilings so high they disappear. I will wait for you at the front gate, and the horns of Erebor will guide you home at last, ‘amad._

She hadn’t answered. Instead she had pressed their brows together and whispered his true name one last time, and Fíli had known it would be a year or more before he would see her again.

He will be a changed dwarf, by then. He hopes he will make her proud. 

A nightingale trills into the growing dark. They’ll have to get moving again in a moment—Gandalf had instructed them to be no more than ten minutes behind Balin in approaching the hobbit’s home.

“Do you think he’ll help us?” Kíli asks, nodding toward the cheery lights at the top of the hill. “Do you think he’ll come?”

Fili doesn’t know, honestly. The hobbits they’ve met thus far are a cheerful folk, but they’re as greedy of their peace and comfort as a raven with a ruby, and just as inclined to ruffled feathers. But he thinks of _irak’adad_ , and how Thorin would answer such a question: boldly and with confidence, whether he felt it or not, because that is what their people would need to hear.

Kíli isn’t one of their people, not really—he’s just Fíli’s little brother—but Thorin expects Fíli to lead if the worst should happen, and Fíli will have to lead his family as well as the rest of the Longbeards, and stand against the might of Smaug and the doubt of the clans, and show the world that the Line of Durin is just as deathless as their great ancestor.

Thorin believes Fíli can do it, and so Fíli will do it.

He will even lead Kíli, if he has to.

“Yes,” he answers finally, his voice too loud in the quiet of the growing dark, his conviction as bright and false as a painted penny. “Of course he will.”

If Kíli notices, he doesn’t say so.

*

Bilbo Baggins is not a happy hobbit.

There are dwarves around every corner, spilling out of door frames, trodding and trampling and grabbing and throwing. They seemed to multiply every time Bilbo turned around, and no amount of shouting or scolding seemed to phase them; it was as if Gandalf had warned them what to expect from a put-upon hobbit, and told them all to ignore him.

He probably had, the confounded, overgrown meddler. Wizards indeed!

Bilbo ducks into the pantry to find a quiet moment, surveying the wreckage with indignation. Cherry tomatoes have cascaded down across the shelves and onions have scattered across the floor; every last sausage is gone, every last cheese round, every last jar of jam and crust of bread, leaving only the cloth wrappings and empty dishes behind.

It’s a right travesty, and he reaches for his fury to head out and try berating them all again, but just then an eruption of laughter rings out from the dining room.

And just like that, the fury turns to smoke, slipping through Bilbo’s grasp.

The noise of them, raucous and laughing, fills Bag-End to the brim, pressing against her creaking rafters and making her feel bigger and warmer than she’s felt in years. These rooms had not felt so alive since Bilbo’s parents had died; it makes his chest tighten with memories, even as every word out of his mouth seems to call forth the long-ago ghosts of his family, protesting the use of his mother’s pottery, his father’s wine.

Gandalf has been watching him flutter through the halls, dead-set on being unhelpful, a wry smile on his face. Bilbo doesn’t really remember Gandalf all that well, but he finds that he does remember that smile. He must have been such a faunt the last time he’d seen it, still full of daydreams and curiosities. What a carefree, happy little thing he’d been—what a lighthearted little hobbit Gandalf must have remembered.

He listens to the dwarves laughing and wonders when the last time was that he was even half that happy.

It’s so easy to imagine his mother flitting among these unexpected guests, playing hostess with ease and good cheer, with golden ale pouring forth as freely as her laughter, smacking sneaky fingers away from hot meat pies before she was quite prepared to serve the dinner. It’s so easy to imagine his father sitting down at the far end of the table with a couple of the older dwarves, smoking pipeweed into a cloud so thick they could barely be seen, exchanging tawdry jokes that Bungo would deny ever hearing the next day.

He wonders if Gandalf can see them as easily as Bilbo can.

He wonders where Gandalf has been, these last years, as Bilbo watched them fade and pass, as Bilbo returned them to the earth. Where was Gandalf then, as Bilbo wandered empty halls, echoing with grief; as he slowly forgot the sound of Bungo’s quiet chuckle and the smell of Belladonna’s treacle tart? Where was Gandalf as Bilbo was picking himself up and learning to move on with his life?

And now Bilbo is rather comfortably settled, isn’t he? He’s learned to enjoy his quiet mornings and his solitary evenings, and he has plenty to do to keep himself busy in between. He has his books, his tenants, and his garden, the odd appointments for tea or to the tailor’s, the invitations to birthday parties. The rhubarb is about ready to be cut, and he’ll be rushed off his feet making pies; the seedlings will be sprouting in the shed, and he’ll be busy planning the flowerbeds with Hamfast Gamgee.

 _I am looking for someone to share in an adventure_ , Gandalf had said.

 _Well, good for him_ , Bilbo thinks, drawing himself back up to full height and preparing to throw himself back into the fray. _He’s seven years too late._

_*_

Being late was something Thrór used to do, when he wanted to make an impression.

It was a trick made possible by court protocols. _You see,_ Thrór would say, bending to whisper into Thorin’s ear with a laugh hidden somewhere in his voice, _the etiquette means they have to wait for me to begin. And there’s no better reminder to a bunch of rowdy dwarrow who holds the power than being late for supper—they must wait for me to receive their meats and ales, and the longer I make them wait, the more aware of their reliance they are._

 _But don’t they starve?_ Thorin would ask. _Don’t they get thirsty?_

 _Oh, hadêd-athturê,_ Thrór would answer, _we don’t make them wait quite that long._

That was before Thrór’s mind had begun to drift, before his eyes had turned from Thorin to linger too long on the shine and gleam of Erebor’s treasures. Thorin had been too young to recognise it at the time, too naive to understand what it meant, but he had understood that the dwarrows in the hall could not eat until Thrór appeared, and he had understood that they were going hungry.

He had understood when the trick had turned to cruelty.

There was no such trick in the halls of Ered Luin. There is no such protocol for a blacksmith king who comes to the table in the wee hours of the night, still sooty from the forges, to eat the bare remains of bread and cheese before falling into bed. There is no such protocol for the heir of madness.

Thorin hadn’t allowed it. Even in the better years, when the advisors and the nobility had urged him to take up a few of the old practices, Thorin hadn’t allowed any of it.

Listening to the party going on inside the hobbit’s little burrow, he is glad of it, but perhaps this once there is some of the old wisdom in being late. To remind these dwarrow who would be his company of who it is they follow—to show this hobbit who would be his burglar of the power that seeks to contract him.

And he is going to need all the power and strength he can muster in the coming months, if he thinks to lead these dwarves into the wilds, knowing that the very mouth of Erebor will be the path into the belly of a beast, knowing that there is no help coming.

They are on their own, and if Thorin is to die for Erebor, he would die as her King.

The blue smoke rising from his pipe is sweet in the evening air and the noise of the dwarrow inside is a comfort as Thorin takes a moment on the bench outside Bilbo Baggins’ door. He does not mean to die for Erebor, he tells himself. He means to follow the path his father and his grandfather had left for him: he means to lead his people home.

 _Home_.

_I'm going home._

Gandalf seems to think that he will be able to call this hobbit away from home, but Thorin’s less sure. This is a peaceful, comfortable place, filled with a peaceful, comfortable folk, and Thorin no longer expects help from those with peace and comfort to lose.

 _Bilbo Baggins will surprise you_ , Gandalf had told him, laughing around his pipe in that vague, irritating way he has. _Likely just as much as he’ll surprise himself._

A song has broken out inside, and Thorin fights an exasperated grin as he makes out the words. They’re good dwarves—well, most of them are good dwarves, anyway—and if they are not the twelve Thorin would have chosen for himself, they are the twelve that chose him, and that is worth more all the armies of all the Houses.

He nearly believes that, too.

The music inside tells him that his dwarrow are done with their feasting, and he is late enough now to hold their attention. He puts away his pipe, straightens his cloak, and makes for the door, waiting for the end of the song to knock before knocking with the hilt of his sword, heavily enough to be heard over the laughter inside.

 _I wonder what surprises this hobbit will hold_ , Thorin thinks, and the door opens.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'amad - mother  
> irak'adad - uncle  
> hadêd-athturê - my seventh star, used here as a term of endearment

**Author's Note:**

> For all Tolkien-canon details, I used the [Tolkien Gateway wiki](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Main_Page) as a reference. 
> 
> For all Khuzdul translations, I used the [translation tool](https://dwarrowscholar.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/502/) made available by The Dwarrow Scholar.
> 
> Find me on Tumblr, [@forhobbitreasons](http://www.forhobbitreasons.tumblr.com), or on my main [@watsonshoneybee](http://www.watsonshoneybee.tumblr.com)!


End file.
